The Difference between Published Design and Actual Play?

[LordSmerf]

I was going to post this in another thread, but it was so off topic that i decided to split it before it derailed the previous discussion (again).

Ron Edwards posed the following question in a the "Radical" ideas from non gamers thread:

Thomas, you didn't make it clear whether you're discussing actual play or published game design, although your thread title at least hints at the latter. Since the recent discussion has focused on game design, I'd like to clarify that play itself, relative to a game text, is the key variable rather than designer's intent, for typical Forge discourse than the reverse.

As to your question, i didn't specify actual play or published game design because i believe that, in this case, we can discuss them both.  It seems to me that most design is an outgrowth of the way people play.  Often design is merely a way of transferring a play style to a new audience.  People who have never played a shared authority, narrative game can pick up a copy of Universalis and gain the benefit of other peoples' experiences and ideas.

This would seem to indicate that you can't really discuss changing conventions within one of these arenas without doing so in the other.  Actual play is informed by design; there are guidelines and ideas for play in design that will carry over into actual play.  Design is informed by actual play; whether in the form of a new game entirely, or modifications to an existing game, experiences with "what works" in play are a major factor in published design.  Does this make sense?

If we accept that the above is true (which i do, for now) then we see that play and design are merely two different perspectives on the same idea.  Whenever we discuss aspects of one of these, we discuss aspects of the other as well.

As i understand it this view is not widely held at the Forge (probably for good reason).  So if i'm wrong please let me know now before i humiliate myself even more.

Questions, comments, disparaging remarks?

Thomas

[Mark Johnson]

I propose:

Imagine a series of blobs marked: Designer Intent, Game Text, Player Understanding/Intent, Social Contact, System and Actual Play

1) Designer Intent intersects with Game Text.
2) Game Text intersects with Player Understanding/Player Intent.
3) Designer Intent does not Intersect with Player Understanding/Intent (unless the designer is the player in question)
4) Player Understanding/Intent intersects with Social Contract and System
5) Social Contract and System does not intersect with Game Text or Designer Intent
6) System is entirely a subset of Social Contract, but it does intersect with Player Understanding/Intent
7) Actual Play is entirely a subset of Social Contract and System
8) Actual Play does not intersect with Player Understanding/Intent

Feel free to agree, argue or ridicule.

I tried ascii graphics, but they do not work here.

[deadpanbob]

Thomas:

I think that's a good idea - and I don't know, but you may be surprised that a lot of people on the Forge agree with you.

In fact, one of the foundational articles, System Does Matter, discusses this very link between actual play and game design.

The critical thing that Ron said is that usually, here at the Forge, games get assessed 'where the rubber meets the road', which is actual play.

This is a concept that I too have wrestled with in my own way, though not nearly as focused as you've put it above, nor headed in the same direction.

It's tough to design a game with the intent to produce specific effects during play and know that you have to wait until the game is actually played to determine your success or failure.

I certainly agree that people's experience playing informs their design, and that a game's design informs the way people play, and if they then use that experience to inform (at least in part) a game design, the circle is unbroken...

Be that as it may, it can remain very problematic under the current state of RPG design theory - especially the very rigorous brand practiced here on the Forge - to accurately assess a game from the text alone.  That's one of the reasons why so much discussion focuses on design's impact on actual play.

All in all, what you've said is likely to not get a heckuva lot of disagreement.

Having said that, I would be interested to read your perspective on how, exactly, you might make the links between Actual Play and Game Design?

Are there specific techniques, sets of techniques, systems, or game designs that had/have a profound effect on the way you play?  If so, what was the general thrust of that effect?  Did you at one point pick up a game of Universalis, paly it, and have it alter your playing preferences/style on the spot?

Mark:

I respectfully disagree with you that Designer Intent doesn't interact - potentially all the way through to technique.  In Incoherent games, or those just plain old poorly written and executed, it can be tough for Designer Intent to have much of an impact - but I'd be hard pressed to see how the Designer Intent in Sorcerer isn't carried through almost in tact right through to the moment by moment techniques used during actual play.

Cheers,


Jason

[Tomas HVM]

This would seem to indicate that you can't really discuss changing conventions within one of these arenas without doing so in the other.

One sound exercise for a gamesmith is to make small roleplaying-games, while totally devoid of thought on actual play. It's an exercise in making yourself more open for new approaches.

To discuss play without the restraints of having to force it into design may be a likevise sound method, in developing ideas.

I place both of these in the "approach"-segment of my frame for the work on RPGs.

My frame:

approach - actual design - real play - reaction

Approach being the way you spur, to create and grow ideas in the initial stages, and how you handle them (with care, or without).

Actual design being the way you formulate your ideas, make choices on genre, method and setting, and create a game.

Real play being the play, and the playtesting.

Reaction being the emotional content of play/game, and how it is met by the players (mainly).

By the way: I met a designer once who strongly suggested that it is wise to make RPGs without aiming for anyone to play them. He claimed that by making games that are unplayable, we learn more about RPGs than by any other games...

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

This is a tiny interjection for clarity. Jason wrote,

I'd be hard pressed to see how the Designer Intent in Sorcerer isn't carried through almost in tact right through to the moment by moment techniques used during actual play.

People seem to be saying this a lot lately. I would state what you're describing this way: role-players' agreement with the techniques represented by the rules is what gets carried through to the techniques they use. This isn't obfuscation; it puts the buck right where it belongs, on the real people in play.

Back to the regularly scheduled discussion,
Best,
Ron

[Jonathan Walton]

I think there are two major obstacles that often prevent Designer Intent from carrying through to Actual Play: communication & the players.

In my mind, a Game Text is simply a way of communicating what play is supposed to be like to the players.  Obviously, that communication is limited both by the descriptive abilities of the Designer and the ability of players to understand what the Designer is trying to get across (however badly s/he is communnicating it).  Sometimes it's possible for players to latch onto the vision of the Designer even when the rules are described vaguely and inexactly (leading to many "fix it up" rules mods that try to preserve the original spirit of the game).

However, thanks to the culture of creative participation that roleplaying encourages, many players like to go beyond preserving the Designer's vision in their games.  They, like modern movie or stage directors, enjoy using a given Game Text and altering it to serve their own vision of play.  This means, even given crystal clear communication, Actual Play may have very little to do with Designer vision.  This has both positive and negative aspects.  Players will often come up with cool, creative ideas that would never have occured to the Designer, but it's also possible that the game will never be played as the Designer intended, meaning his/her vision will go on being unrealized, at least in that particular group.

[deadpanbob]

This is a tiny interjection for clarity. Jason wrote,

I'd be hard pressed to see how the Designer Intent in Sorcerer isn't carried through almost in tact right through to the moment by moment techniques used during actual play.

People seem to be saying this a lot lately. I would state what you're describing this way: role-players' agreement with the techniques represented by the rules is what gets carried through to the techniques they use. This isn't obfuscation; it puts the buck right where it belongs, on the real people in play.

Ron:  Right you are.  Of course the extent to which the designer's intent gets used is wholly a function of the actual people playing the game.

In addition, I would say that the Designer has some responsibility to clearly and effectively communicate his vision/suggested techniques/focus to the people playing the game so they can make an informed decision about how much of the Designer's intent they will carry through to actual play.  Or, if you prefer the shorthand - System Does Matter.

Johnathan:

I think you are saying another version of what Ron pointed out.  I agree here too that players can, and do, alter the game's design to better fit their own vision of play.  I would only say, to re-inforce what I've said above, is that the players decision in this case is affected greatly by the skill and focus of the designer.

Thomas:

I think your model works, for what it's worth, as least insofar as it's describing the general process of game design.  I'm assuming that the reaction phase feeds back into approach?

Cheers,


Jason

[LordSmerf]

After some time away from the idea, coming back to it i find it rather interesting.  One of the things that sparked this was the fact that i play my designs and i design games for me to play.  If others enjoy them, good.  If not, well at least i will, or i'll make changes.

For me i use design to fix things i don't like in actual play.  Things that don't work or could work better.  I would assume that most designers make a good number of design decisions based on what they want to play.  Now, i would like to say that i believe that Actual Play is the ultimate goal of design (except in the rare case of a design being executed simply to illustrate a gameplay principle/concept).  Design is simply a tool to facilitate a desired type or structure of play.  The reason we go to sources outside ourselves for Systems (like getting Universalis or Sorcerer) is so that we don't have to reinvent the wheel.

Now, i'm pretty sure that you would agree that since actual play is the ultimate goal that it is expected that the players will change the design so that their desires/goals for play are fulfilled.

I'm  not really sure where i'm going with this.  I'm going to let it percolate some more.  If it sparks any ideas in anyone else, i'd love to hear them...

Thomas

[Mike Holmes]

Certainly we expect that players will alter the rules to taste (how could one stop someone if one wanted to anyhow?). What you give in a design is one way to effectively play. So that it may be playable unalterable for some people, and that those who do alter it have something that already hangs together from which to make their changes. The less the original game is well designed, the more work alterations take, and the more alterations will likely be neccessary. If enough alterations are neccessary, the question arises, why play that system at all? At the point that alterations are getting frustrating, that's a sure signal that you're using the wrong system. Given the plethora of systems available, I'd change long before I got to the frustrating level.

There's an alternate vein of thought that says that you should give players just some of what they need to play, and let them adapt that shell to their known methods. I think that's functional under certain circumstances as well, but I don't see how it's a superior method of design.

Mike

[LordSmerf]

There's an alternate vein of thought that says that you should give players just some of what they need to play, and let them adapt that shell to their known methods. I think that's functional under certain circumstances as well, but I don't see how it's a superior method of design.

I would tend to say that this is a non-optimal design philosophy.  The reason is this.  The first few times i play a system i try to play it exactly as it is written.  Even if this means that there are serious problems in play, it teaches me something about the author's intent (i hope so anyway) as well as providing a new perspective on play.  If i modified a system immediately so that it meets my current expectations then i would miss the oppurtunity to learn from someone elses expectations.

This happened in game of Universalis last night.  We were playing with: three people who had never played Universalis, one of which who had never RPed, and myself with one game under my belt.  We decided to impose our expectations on the game by setting up a Gimmick allowing ownership and setting the game in a gameworld we had been working on for years.  The session, while fun, really missed a lot of its potential.  I have to accept responsibility since i proposed both of the Tenets that really broke down the intent (as i read it) of Universalis.  In so doing i robbed the group of the unique perspective Universalis brings to the table.  How are we supposed to decide whether we like this new perspective if we never look at it?  Needless to say, next session will be a more "traditional" Universalis game...

Thomas

[RaconteurX]

An anecdote in support of the idea that Published Design and Actual Play are two entirely different beasts:

Over the course of several years, a few friends and I ran a series of Paranoia events at one of the local conventions. They were invariably vicious, brutal and amusing affairs, with plotlines ripped whole-cloth from war films... "Bridge over the Reservoir KWI", "The Dirtied O-ZEN", "The Green-Clearance Berets" and, most horrifying of all, "Midway" (carnival folk = Commie mutant traitor scum!).

A few years later, I took our bit of madness on the road and ran "Bridge over the Reservoir KWI" at one of the big regional cons. Unbeknownst to me, two of the players were West End Games staffers involved with the Paranoia line. After the radioactive dust had settled, they thanked me for an "exhilarating romp", to which I replied that it was great that finally someone created a game in which 50-100% casualties were the norm so people could let go of the need for their characters to survive.

They glanced at one another. "We designed the game so that 50-100% casualties of the original first clones were the norm, not the entire clone families of every player," as mad-eyed smirks overtook their faces, "but we like your way much better!"

[LordSmerf]

Thanks for sharing, but i would say that your point supports what i'm saying.  I'm not trying to say that no on plays outside of design, what i'm trying to get at is that design follows play and play follows design in a circular feedback loop.  You were playing with a 50%-100% casualty rate (which was a design concept), but in a way that was different than designed.  When the designers played in a way that was outside of their design, but found that play was better i would think that the design would change accordingly...  Does that make sense?  All fine-tuning in design is informed by actual play, but actual play is just as informed by design.  I don't read The Riddle of Steel material and suddenly re-write the system so that i'm playing D&D, if there are changes it is still recognizable as TRoS.

Thomas

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Thomas,

"Still recognizable as" is purely a judgment call. For instance, I tend to think small changes can be very significant, especially if they involve IIEE or the reward system. If this thread is really just about that particular judgment call, then it needs to be ended.

I do see one issue to develop further, though. As far as the "circular feedback loop" is concerned, let's break it down into two different levels of my theory: GNS and Techniques.

GNS deals with goals, preferences, and social feedback about whether we're getting any satisfaction out of what we're doing. Techniques are the actual procedures of play. "Rules" are Techniques that happen to be written down.

So when playing, what you see are Techniques (and some ephemerae among them, which is another topic). You'll also see a constant feedback between the Techniques and the Exploration going on, and a constant feedback as well between that and the GNS preferences.

An example of feedback between Techniques and Exploration: roll to hit, narrate outcome, establish that Sebastian did indeed strike the ogre and cut off its hand. An example of feedback between all of that and GNS: "Cool!" says one of the players, in reference to a particular interaction or Technique. "Oh my ... God," says another player, "That's your father, and you never knew it."

So GNS informs which Techniques are being used, and Techniques as a whole (in combination) are what achieve GNS goals.

The overall social enjoyment, and various other behaviors that let everyone know that it's happening, are what turn the circle into a spiral (as Julie put it in a discussion last Sunday). That spiral "narrows" the activity into what Makes Fun for everyone.

If you'd like to discuss this further, then it needs to be taken up in the GNS forum.

Best,
Ron

[LordSmerf]

I would say that i meant my "judgement call" to be incidental.  I guess i am really trying to clarify the idea that Actual Play and Published Design are two seperate entities in the same way that two sides of a coin are seperate entities.  The two are so inextricable bound together that discussing them as seperate entities makes less sense than discussing them as the whole they form.  There are benifits to an analysis of one or the other, but most of the time you really want to discuss the coin itself.

I like the "spiral" illustration, it is a good articulation of an interesting result of the "feedback loop."  I don't think it covers everything, but i don't have anything better...

If you feel that this discussion is better attuned to the GNS forum, please move it.  I'd like to continue the discussion of this idea, if there is a discussion to be had.

Thanks.

Thomas